Gloves having abrasive material thereon are not in and of themselves new, but each glove which has appeared on the market, for one reason or the other, has not been satisfactory, for both use by the housewife to peel potatoes, carrots and the like, and for heavier duty uses such as abrading paint, scouring pans and the like, while permitting complete flexibility of the glove. Representative of the prior art devices is the glove disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 2,459,985, issued Jan. 25, 1949 to C. H. Woodbury for HAND COVERING. The Woodbury device shows a glove in which the entire finger, palm and substantially the entire thumb portion of the glove is covered by an abrasive material which while effective to abrade certain objects results in a stiff unwieldy, non-flexible glove and is unsatisfactory for handling smaller items such as carrots, potatoes and the like.
U.S. Pat. No 3,050,738 issued Aug. 28, 1962 to A. W. Rytina for GLOVE, discloses a glove in which the glove fabric is a mixture of plastisol and elastomer flock dispensed therein. The flock disclosed in the Rytina patent is insufficiently hard and sharp for use in heavy duty jobs such as scouring pots, pans and abrading paint. The Rytina glove like the Woodbury glove is clumsy and relatively inflexible. U.S. Pat. No. 3,643,386 issued Feb. 22, 1972 to Grzyll for ABRASIVE HAND APPAREL, discloses a glove in which insufficient areas are covered with an abrasive material that is itself insufficiently hard and sharp to accommodate all of the jobs necessary in the device of the present invention. The Gryzll patent also discloses a mitten having the abrasive material over substantially the entire working surface, resulting in a cumbersome, non-flexible device much like the Rytina and Woodbury gloves.
U.S. Pat. No. 168,836 granted to H. L. Hall Oct. 19, 1875, discloses a cloth glove having metal plates or disks as discrete abrading units positioned on each of the finger and thumb stalls as well as over the palm of the glove. The Hall patent is difficult to manufacture, and of course, would not be useful in a household function where the user will wet the glove. Providing metal plates or disks through a synthetic organic resin would not be feasible since the resultant hole in the resin would tend to rip under tension resulting in the destruction of the glove. Other prior art devices are cited in the patent application of Albert A. Bianchi, Ser. No. 662,734, filed Mar. 1, 1976, now U.S. Pat. No. 4,038,787, for ABRASIVE GLOVE. However, all of the prior art cited in the Bianchi application as well as the Bianchi application itself, presents problems either with the particulate matter forming the abrasive resulting in a product unsuitable for use with food, such as disclosed in the Bianchi patent, or involves a normal cloth glove with a construction that is not suitable for transfer to a synthetic organic resin or rubber glove.
In order to obviate all of the short comings of the prior art and to provide a two-piece hand covering which is flexible, thereby allowing the user to handle small items, such as potatoes, carrots and other small vegetables, while at the same time being capable of most heavy duty abrading uses, a hand covering or glove has been constructed in which individual discrete abrading units of one-piece molded synthetic organic resin have been secured to the two-piece construction to enable the entire hand covering or glove to be flexible.